When you run an aquarium, sometimes the fish in it will have babies, but depending on what type of fish you keep, those babies are likely to get eaten.

What would you do if a family friend asked if she could have some of the babies, but she didn’t have an aquarium setup already, so you told her no?

That is what the young man in this story did, but now his mom is upset because he hurt her friend’s feelings by telling her no.

AITA for not realizing I hurt someone’s feelings because I said no to giving them some baby fish and not thinking it was a big idea afterwards?

So, recently a pair of my guppies had baby fry in my community tank. (That’s An aquarium tank hosting multiple different species of fish).

Can’t blame him, that is a lot of extra fish.

Now I didn’t really want the babies because guppies can have up to 50 babies per spawning and i have neither the tank space nor the food to keep them.

So, I left them for the adult fish in the tank to eat, this is a pretty common thing to do with keeping guppies as it helps with population control.

( I only have 4 adult guppies because I didn’t want to overcrowd my tank with all the babies these fish can have).

The vast majority of baby fish get eaten. Its nature.

Expecting most of them to die I kept telling my mother and younger sibling not to have any high hopes as most of them weren’t going to survive.

(I was right, she had at least 20 and now there are only 9 fry left in only a week of them being born).

Which leads to my current issue. At the moment, my mother is letting some people stay with us in a caravan in the backyard.

Nothing wrong with this.

Last night the woman(38F) heard that I didn’t expect many of them to live so she asked if she could have them and I told her straight up no.

Now, I would like to state that if the option of giving the baby fry away in time for them not to be eaten was possible then I would of done so.

Yup, you have to be careful with fish.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the case as no one I know has a set up and fully cycled tank ready to take the baby fry that wouldn’t of sent them into water shock and killed them immediately, or gotten them eaten by their own fish.

Baby fish are sensitive and fragile, who would of thought😒, but any way I thought that was the end of it, or so I thought.

I guess mom and her friend don’t really understand fish.

Apparently not because right after getting home this afternoon my mother comes storming up to me and scolds me for hurting her friends feelings.

So, I try explaining to her that the reason I said no was exactly because she didn’t have a tank set up and ready for them, and that as I said I hadn’t expected many to survive if any at all.

100% agree, this was the nice thing to do.

Better the fry have quick ends then suffocate slow and painfully because someone wanted fish without doing the work required of keeping a living breathing animal.

My mother then goes on about how she knows I dissociate and I’m not aware when I’m being cold but that I had been a jerk to her friend and that I really hurt her feelings.

Maybe he could have been more sensitive about how he said no, but other than that…

So, basically AITA for not realizing I just her feelings telling her no she couldn’t have the fish, and then not really thinking it was a big deal?

AITA?

Based only on the information he wrote here, he could have explained why it wasn’t an option rather than just saying no. Other than that, he did nothing wrong.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

Yup, the woman needs to grow up.

Why give away free fish food.

This person says he sounds very thoughtful.

She had no idea how to care for these fish.

This commenter says the woman sounds like a child.

Guppies are a dime a dozen, just buy some.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.